Interviewer: Do you miss your former bandmates?- Tom Blankenship
Tom Blankenship: Yeah, I miss 'em, but definitely on the last run with those guys, we called it "The Death Tour" because it was just miserable. Sure, I sometimes pine for the old times, but I'm just glad that they've moved on and that they're happy now and that they aren't in that place that they were. We still see them all the time. In fact, they both got married over the two-month break that we had in Kentucky.
(The Pitch, November 2005)
In an Metromix interview with Tom Blankenship, Blankenship talks about Johnny Quaid, and Danny Cash leaving the band. Blankenship explains that the pair left the band right before the Thanksgiving of 2003, while the band were on tour in Europe. The time before the break off had been a rough time for the band, with extensive and exhausting touring.
Just before leaving
In an Spin interview from May 2008 the band talk about the time period before Quaid and Cash left the band. According to the interview the band performed shows on 143 dates in 2002 and 110 in 2003, Jim James and Tom Blankenship also commented on the decision to say yes to gig after gig.
Jim James: Early on when you're given opportunities, you've got to take them. A lot of bands feel that, because there's the fear that if you don't, you'll fall off the face of the earth(Spin interview, May 2008)
Tom Blankenship: You're going and going and going and finally it's like, what the fuck am I doing?
Jim James: I got so sick at one point, I thought I was losing my mind.
"We made the decision to take every opportunity that came to us, but they were a casualty of it. We never stopped to say, 'Oh, maybe we should stop to take a breather every once in a while.'"- Tom Blankenship
(Rolling Stone interview, October 2005)
"You can’t keep that up for more than six months at the most, and they’d been doing it for four-and-a-half years. Danny and Johnny just stepped out. They were like, ‘I can’t do it anymore.’ It was painful, I’m sure."- James Agren, founder of Darla Records
(Magnet Magazine interview, September 2007)
"They just don't like touring and people should always be happy, not stuck in a situation they don't enjoy."- Jim James
(The Age interview, March 2004)
"We'd sat down to have a meeting about the future, talking about all the touring we were going to be doing in the next year, and they were both like, "There's no way I can even talk about this when I'm sick of doing it right now." Really, you can't blame them. We'd been touring solid for all of '02 before that. I don't think we'd taken a few months off in a long time. Carl and Bo joined the band that following January. It's just one of those things about having new guys in the band and for the other three of us, have it be something different in a sense, giving it a new life"- Tom Blankenship
(Metromix interview, August 2008)
To continue
Patrick, Jim and I were standing in the hallway of this hotel in London after those two quit, and Jim looked at me and he's like, `What do you think? What're you gonna do?' and I'm like, `I'll be around. I'm still here.- Tom Blankenship
(Chicago Tribune interview, May 2006)
"It was pretty difficult. It came basically two or three months after It Still Moves came out. It was tough. The five of us were like a family and whenever I thought of the band before I joined, when it wasn’t even really a band yet, it was just three people, I always thought of MMJ being Jim and John. John did all the recording. "- Tom Blankenship
(College Tower interview, June 2005)
In an Magnet Magazine interview Jim James says that the decision to continue as a band wasn't a given and that they also considered continuing as a three-piece.
"We didn’t really know whether we would keep going. We thought, ‘Maybe we’ll do it as a three-piece.’ I really didn’t know. It would’ve been different. I’m glad it happened like this."- Jim James
(Magnet Magazine interview, September 2007)
That's when a friend suggested that the band should try having auditions for the two vacated spots.
